### Update: I regret to say that Victor, the host of the Subjective podcast, has decided to take both his show and archives offline, so this recording is no longer available for listening. You're welcome to check out my [interview](http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2015/5/11/on-the-grid-podcast-falling-flat-interview) with the On the Grid podcast that was recorded shortly after this interview on the Subjective podcast.

Passions were ignited with the release of Squarespace Logo, a tool that enables small businesses to easily design a logo with a simple drag-and-drop interface. This was echoed when Tailor Brands built a competing tool for making free logos. Many were similarly concerned upon the announcement of The Grid, a tool that is purported to automate web layouts and designs.

If Apple's product line is this fragmented, one can only imagine how many screen sizes and densities there are on the Android platform.

In the early 2010s, the design industry became increasingly aware that designing both web and native applications would require more effort than it had previously. It is argued that before one could achieve market success with a one size fits all desktop or mobile application or website. Designers today are compelled to adapt their designs to multiple display sizes. It is not just traditional laptops and desktops that need to be taken into account, but also TVs, smart watches and even car dashboards.

According to current dogma, visual design must necessarily take a back seat.

The most interesting phenomenon emerging from recent trends is not the silence of developers in the face of conflicting interests with operating system makers. Developers should be expected to bend towards the present incentive structure. What has been surprising is the response of designers, particularly visual designers: their eagerness to follow the trend toward flatness. A trend that ultimately goes against their interests. Even those few who have criticized flat design (who have rarely been rigorous in their critiques) generally bought the operating system makers' line of thought that UI design needed a radical rethinking. These visual designers lacked conviction in the integrity of their craft's history.

Icon design used to be a specialty at Apple. Today, they encourage app designers to follow their homogenous example. The height of creativity in icon design today is a flat, white super-ellipse with a logo in the middle.

In June of 2001, on the release of the first guidelines for OS X Aqua icon design, Corey Marion of the Iconfactory and Alan Graham of Mac DevCenter were interviewed by O’Reilly. The interviewer recalled from WWDC: "Apple stressed the importance of building high quality icons for OS X...They recommend that engineers hire graphic designers to handle their UI and icon design."

The Biggest Mistake Developers Could Make

The interviewer then asked Marion "What's the biggest mistake you see developers make?" Marion responded: "Starting too late in the process so there is not time to develop icons and obviously not hiring designers to do the UI design."

Apple Watch and iOS 7 emerged from Same Apple Design Team

Many have been curious about this, it has now been confirmed that iOS 7 and Apple Watch were produced by the same team at Apple. It's not particularly surprising, but still interesting. Perhaps Ive is letting his vice-grip loosen ever so slightly.

There is an unfortunate climate of fear in the software community today. It is primarily in ephemeral video interviews and podcasts that we get any semblance of coherent criticism and even then it is reticent. Worse than the fact that this criticism is relegated to verbal discussions is that it is later renounced by the very same designers and developers when they are interviewed in the more permanent-seeming medium of the written word. In written interviews, these fair-weather critics go on to reverse their opinions and praise the products of modern minimalist UI design because it is more convenient not to risk questioning powerful industry leaders.

In order to fortify their position and divert attention away from criticism, modern minimalist apologists have amassed a whole assortment of baseless arguments for dismissing visual design issues. If you find yourself in a discussion with a modern minimalist who makes any of the following fallacious arguments, you can safely assume...

Apple paid homage to Jackson Pollack's drip painting by spoiling the public scenery with their new Jiefangbei, China "About the Artists" Apple Store. In doing so, they make the smoggy, polluted air look good in comparison.

Around the web, criticism of the modern minimalist catastrophe has been suppressed. A wise commenter under the pseudonym “.X.” described iOS 7 as follows, “It looks unprofessional and simplistic, like something a person without artistic skills would come up with.” He continued, “Anyone can make single-colored circles and squares without depth.” In response, Tim Shundo, Lead Designer at Circa—an app named Best App of 2013 by both Apple and Google, retorted: “I’m sorry I’m calling BS"...